WebOS: Are we there yet?

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It looks like the 600 employees in Hewlett-Packard’s WebOS division will only have to wait a bit longer to know their fate.

New Chief Executive Meg Whitman told French newspaper Le Figaro that she plans to announce her decision on the operating system in the next two weeks.

“This is not an easy decision, because we have a team of 600 people which is in limbo,” she was quoted as saying in French, as per the translation by Google Translate.

HP, which acquired WebOS when it bought Palm in 2010 for $1.2 billion, has been looking to sell the mobile software platform, sources have told Reuters.

WebOS employees have been in a limbo ever since HP decided to kill its webOS-based TouchPad tablet following poor sales.

Whitman, in the interview, also acknowledged that HP may lose its crown as the No.1 computer seller next year to Silicon Valley neighbor Apple, thanks to roaring sales of iPads. Apple will be anointed No.1 only if tablets are counted as PCs, of course.

The former eBay CEO, who has so far gained points for making quick decisions and communicating more clearly with investors, expects any significant changes that are implemented at the company to translate to visible results in three to five years, given the size of HP.

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Poornima Gupta writes about technology out of San Francisco, covering consumer and enterprise device makers Apple, HP and Dell. She previously spent five years in Detroit covering the crisis-ridden U.S. automotive sector that resulted in two of the biggest bankruptcy filings in the industrial world. She won a SABEW award for reporting on the failed merger between GM and Chrysler, and their negotiations with the federal government.